MasterCard Announces Exclusive Partnership with Transport for London for Oyster Wallet Branding

London, UK, January 17, 2011 -
MasterCard today announced a new, multi-million pound partnership with Transport for London (TfL) for the exclusive branding of TfL’s Oyster card wallet for 2011. The Oyster card wallet is distributed with all new cards issued and is available from tube and rail stations and Travel Information Centres.

The partnership is another milestone in MasterCard’s strategy to raise awareness of MasterCard® PayPass™ contactless payments in transport systems, as cities such as London move towards enabling contactless ‘open loop’ payments on their trains, tubes and buses. This would allow commuters to ‘Tap & Go™’ and pay travel fares directly at the ticketing gate with the same credit, debit or prepaid card they use to make everyday purchases.

Hany Fam, President of the UK & Ireland Division at MasterCard, said:
“Oyster has been a huge success, providing millions of consumers every day with a convenient way of accessing London's transport system. But we believe that MasterCard PayPass can offer even more. Frustrations such as missing a train because you have to queue up to buy a ticket, or waiting for a bus only to find that you don’t have enough value to travel, could be a thing of the past.

“We will be distributing six million wallets in the capital next year, with travellers in London tapping their Oyster cards over 13 million times a day1.”

The partnership, negotiated by UM London with a campaign planned by CBS Outdoor and IPM, will also see MasterCard brand London Underground ticket barriers to support its key initiatives and sponsorship properties over the coming year, including the UEFA Champions League Final in May 2011.

MasterCard PayPass Transit Credentials:
With established deployments as early as 2005, MasterCard is providing PayPass contactless payment solutions for urban transportation centres around the world, across the US, Asia (including Singapore, Taiwan, Korea) and Europe (including the UK, Italy, France, Turkey, Poland, and Russia).

MasterCard’s global transit strategy supports a range of solutions that can be tailored to the needs of local transit systems and offers the benefits of using MasterCard’s network for speed and security. With deployments in numerous countries around the world, solutions range from the use of credit, debit, prepaid and co-branded products to purchase transit fare media, to more advanced processing solutions to manage a transit agency’s fraud risk without compromising speed at point of entry.

Recent global milestones include:

In June 2010, MasterCard and the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA), Port Authority of New York and New Jersey (PATH) and NJ TRANSIT (NJT) launched a six month pilot programme, in which MasterCard PayPass is accepted for fare payments on select train and bus routes throughout New York City and New Jersey. This is the first payment system to link the transit agencies and allow riders to move seamlessly among transportation modes eliminating the need for riders to carry specific fare cards. The pilot enables riders of the three transit systems to purchase fares and transfer between transit systems simply by tapping a single contactless credit or debit card or device.

In October 2009, MasterCard pioneered the first ever use of contactless bankcard payments on public transport in the UK on around 200 Stagecoach buses in Merseyside.

In 2008, MasterCard pioneered the first contactless payments in UK taxis in London’s iconic black cabs, following our introduction of the technology in New York’s yellow cabs the previous year.

Since its launch in 2005, the prepaid TaiwanMoney card has enabled cardholders in Kaohsiung (the second biggest city in Taiwan) to use a single card in both retail and transport environments. The same balance is decremented whether the card is used in a shop to buy a newspaper, or to pay for travel on one of the city's 1800 buses.

The popularity and reach of MasterCard PayPass continues to grow rapidly, with over 83 million cards and devices in use at approximately 265,000 merchant locations worldwide in Q3 2010.

About MasterCard Worldwide
As a leading global payments company, MasterCard Worldwide prides itself on being at the heart of commerce, helping to make life easier and more efficient for everyone, everywhere. MasterCard serves as a franchisor, processor and advisor to the payments industry, and makes commerce happen by providing a critical economic link among financial institutions, governments, businesses, merchants, and cardholders worldwide. In 2009, $2.5 trillion in gross dollar volume was generated on its products by consumers around the world. Powered by the MasterCard Worldwide Network — the fastest payment processing network in the world — MasterCard processes over 22 billion transactions each year, has the capacity to handle 140 million transactions per hour, with an average network response time of 140 milliseconds and with 99.99 percent reliability. MasterCard advances global commerce through its family of brands, including MasterCard®, Maestro®, and Cirrus®; its suite of core products such as credit, debit, and prepaid; and its innovative platforms and functionalities, such as MasterCard PayPass™ and MasterCard inControl™. MasterCard serves consumers, governments, and businesses in more than 210 countries and territories. For more information, please visit us at www.mastercard.com. Follow us on Twitter: @mastercardnews.